Yes, Let’s Have Democrats Apologize for Slavery

Posted on April 14, 2008

-By Warner Todd Huston

Just a few days ago I wrote an article ridiculing a woman from Connecticut for wasting the state legislature’s time bothering with a resolution that forced the state to apologize for the witch trials carried out by various Connecticut towns during the 1600’s. I mentioned that “apologizing” for things that happened hundreds of years ago was rather stupid. And witch trials aren’t the only things people want our government(s) to “apologize” for, as we all know. Certainly the long-past support of slavery by the United States is one subject most referenced for which apologies are sought.

I maintained then that such apologies do no one any good. Apologies, I claimed, can only be properly offered and only be graciously accepted by those actually harmed directly by a slight. Something that happened hundreds of years ago, I said, cannot be apologized for. Those slights just are. Live with it.

But, I may have found something that has changed my mind on the offering of apologies. It came in the form of an open letter to the Democrat Party penned by Lt. Colonel Frances Rice a retired US Army officer and member of the Lincoln Heritage Institute.

In her Open Letter to the Democrat Party, Frances was asking for an apology over slavery. I’ll specify here that she wasn’t asking for this apology from the “United States,” to be sure. She wants it directly from the Democrat Party. After all, as Frances’ points reveal, it wasn’t really the “United States” that supported slavery, but more specifically a faction of the country in the form of the Democrat Party and its antecedents. And, I have to say, the woman has a point.

Colonel Frances begins her resolution, as most do, with a “we the undersigned” prologue. “We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert,” she says before she lays out the facts of the case, facts that amount to the truth that slavery was not as much an “American” sentiment as it was a bedrock principle of the Democrat Party. And, worse, the Democrats have never admitted to their perfidy.

Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,

Well, now there is something I can agree that someone should apologize for.

Col. Frances goes on to outlay all the atrocities committed against blacks from the first landing in the new world right up to today’s infantilizing of blacks all across the country.

Her litany is long and lamentable, but here are some highlights:

Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,

Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,

Whereas, according to leading historians (both black and white), the horrific atrocities committed against African Americans during slavery and Reconstruction were financed, sponsored, and promoted by the Democratic Party and their Ku Klux Klan supporters,

Whereas from 1870 to 1930, in an effort to deny African Americans their civil rights and to keep African Americans from voting Republican, thousands of African Americans were shot, beaten, lynched, mutilated, and burned to death by Ku Klux Klan terrorists from the Democratic Party,

Whereas Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission,

Well, it goes on and on. Now, I’d like to point out that we can find racist language or language to protect “institutions” (read slavery) in the states in the platforms of many Democrat Party platforms. Decade after decade all the way up until modern times, the Democrats sought to protect their privilege to oppress blacks. Year after year, election after election, the Democrat Party sought to sanctify in law and in principle the enslavement and/or oppression of Negroes in the US.

Now, it should also be noted that the very first Republican platform in 1856 included planks that addressed in negative terms those very same “institutions” that the Democrat Party wished to preserve. The GOP, in contrast, often had language to mitigate the status of blacks and minorities, to lift them out of oppression. In fact, the GOP has been at the forefront of supporting rights for blacks since its earliest days. Without the GOP, for instance, the 1964 civil rights bill could never have passed.

So, is the “United States” the entity we should be targeting as the perpetrators of slavery? Yes, but only to the degree that it allowed the Democrat Party to be a legitimate political entity and for not hunting them down as the hatemongers they were… and are today to a much lesser degree.

So, now I have to reassess my stance on these apologies. Democrats should apologize for chattel slavery. Democrats should apologize for keeping blacks in poverty and ignorance. Democrats should apologize for lynchings and Jim Crow laws. Democrats should apologize for “separate but equal,” bussing, “white’s only” signs, miscegenation laws, poll taxes, and welfare mommas. While we are at it, Democrats should apologize for Japanese interment and voter fraud… but I’ll settle for their apology for how they’ve mistreated black people from the 1400s to today.

I don’t see any reason for the entire USA to apologize for slavery, though. Heck, millions of Americans actually had family that fought and some even died to end slavery. We call them Republicans who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Why should they have to apologize?

No, I stand corrected on this one. Slavery should be apologized for and it is Democrats who should make that apology for all their evils.

Yes, they should apologize. But I won’t hold my breath.

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Comments

5 Responses to “Yes, Let’s Have Democrats Apologize for Slavery”

Andrew Bryant on April 14th, 2008 11:42 am

Warner–

Have a look at this article by Rev. Wayne
Perryman, called “Democrats
Owe Blacks an Apology.” It starts off

Dear Chairman McAuliffe:

My name is Rev. Wayne Perryman. I am an African American inner-city minister in the Seattle area and the author of the enclosed book, Unfounded Loyalty. All of my life I have voted Democrat. In the past, I worked with several Democratic candidates and served on the committee of the Washington State Black Clergy to Re-elect President Clinton in 1996. As you know, during the past 70 years African Americans have consistently supported the Democratic Party and put five Democratic presidents in the White House.

The purpose of this letter is to humbly and respectfully request that the DNC offer a formal apology to African Americans for the party’s past racist policies and practices toward African Americans, and further request that this apology be issued during the upcoming 2004 convention…
RightWingRocker on April 14th, 2008 10:15 pm

A low blow against the Democrats, to be sure.

The Donks didn’t support slavery any more than the Republicans did. They merely believed, as do many of today’s conservatives, that it was not in the jurisdiction of the federal government to abolish slavery, and that the Tenth Amendment placed that power in the hands of the States.

Any originalist would say they have a point, regardless of their state of agreement.

While it is true enough that most of those fighting against Emancipation were likely Democrats, it is unfair to say that the party’s position was pro-slavery.

Evidence – the relevant portion of the Democratic Party’s 1840 Platform:

7. Resolved, That congress has no power, under the constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states, and that such states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts by abolitionists or others, made to induce congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend to our political institutions.

It could further be argued that Lincoln, in his very correct zeal to end slavery, set the stage for the very intrusions of the federal government that we see today (ironically by the Democrats). Lincoln’s actions may very well have amounted to a repeal of the Tenth Amendment.

Seriously, substitute any of the following in place of the word “slavery” in the above quote:

healthcare
education
election policy
eminient domain

See what I mean? The Democrats were not taking a stand in favor of slavery; they were taking a stand in favor of STATES’ RIGHTS. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of slavery itself (I’m against it, as are all freedom-loving Americans), you cannot deny that the Democrats had a point.

Let’s hit the libs hard, but we can beat them without playing these kinds of games.

RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
RightWingRocker on April 14th, 2008 10:18 pm

They merely believed, as do many of today’s conservatives, that it was not in the jurisdiction of the federal government to abolish slavery

Please excuse my error here. The correct sentiment should be along the lines of: the Democrats believed that it was not in the jurisdiction of the federal government to abolish slavery, a position many conservatives take today with regard to many other very serious issues.

I had already submitted the comment before I recognized the error.

Now let me proofread the rest!

RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Andy B on April 15th, 2008 7:23 am

RWR–

Your argument is weak for this simple reason. By reverting to the states, the right to own slaves is, by default, support for slavery.

Let’s say you are right and all the democrats wanted was to adhere to federalism. And let’s assume that was granted. Would they have freed the slaves? They had every opportunity to do so prior to the elections of 1856. When the new Republican party ran on a platform that said in part,

As our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the Territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein. That we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislation, of any individual, or association of individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States, while the present Constitution shall be maintained.

The Democrat party on the other hand ran on a platform in 1856 that read in part,

>blockquote>The Democratic Party will resist all attempts at renewing, in congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made.

So here’s a simple question. If democrats didn’t want the federal government making decisions they believed the states should have made. Why didn’t they abolish slavery? Why did it take a new political party to emerge to advocate abolition? Besides, who controlled the state governments? It wasn’t the WIG’s or the Republicans. It was the Democrats.

Here’s some more facts you might find inconvenient. The democrats opposed the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th amendments. The Democrats passed the Repeal Act of 1894 that overturned civil right laws enacted by Republicans. The Democrats passed those discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. They opposed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, the Civil Rights of 1866, and the Enforcement Act of 1870. They fought against The Forced Act of 1871, The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, The Civil Rights Act of 1875, The Freeman Bureau, The Civil Rights Act of 1957, The Civil Rights Act of 1960, and The United State Civil Rights Commission.

So I ask you, in all that time, during all the oppression and discrimination that took place. When were the democrats going to concede that their “States Rights” arguments weren’t working for blacks?

The difference between the democrats states rights arguments back then and the republicans states rights arguments now are very different. Back then the democrats used the states rights argument to perpetuate slavery. They used it as an excuse to continue slavery. The republicans party was formed specifically to abolish slavery.
Warner Todd Huston on April 15th, 2008 11:18 am

Andy B is right. The ONLY reason that the southern states wanted to rely on states’ rights was to safeguard slavery. That was the sole reason.